What are the best streaming settings for PC games on Android TV?

Every streaming client on the TV has a page of numbers — resolution, frame rate, bitrate, codec, pacing — and no way to know which combination is right for your box, your Wi-Fi and your PC. Forums give you someone else’s numbers for someone else’s setup.

Set the bitrate too high and the picture breaks up; too low and it is soft. Pick a frame rate the box cannot decode and it stutters. Pick the wrong resolution and you get bars.

You want a starting point that works and a way to tell, from the sofa, what to change.

The right settings are the ones your hardware can actually deliver: the decoder in the box sets the ceiling for resolution and frame rate, the network sets the bitrate the link can carry, and the PC’s encoder sets how fast frames can be made. A client that offers everything lets you pick the impossible.

ChimpDeck narrows the choices to the possible ones — resolutions labelled with how they will arrive, frame rates the decoder really plays — and then regulates bitrate and repair live with the PC’s own telemetry, so the number you pick is a starting point, not a bet.

1. 01

   Cable the box

   An Ethernet-connected TV box removes most stutter before any setting. If it must be Wi-Fi, the app keeps Android’s low-latency Wi-Fi mode on during the session — the stutter causes are here.

2. 02

   Resolution: the TV’s own

   The list starts with your device’s size, then the PC monitor’s exact aspect at native, 1440, 1080 and 720 heights, then standards — each labelled monitor mode, exact via virtual display, or with bars. Choose the TV’s own for no bars; drop to 1440 high if the link struggles.

3. 03

   Frame rate: 60, or what the box really does

   The row offers only rates the decoder supports. 60 fps is the safe choice on most boxes; 120 needs a 120 Hz TV and a decoder that keeps up. The display refresh follows the stream automatically.

4. 04

   Bitrate: suggested, and let it regulate

   Start with «Suggested». The regulator lowers bitrate and raises repair when it sees losses and puts them back when the link recovers, live, without reconnecting; the PC’s telemetry tells it whether the source or the network is the limit.

5. 05

   Pacing: balanced; codec: automatic

   Balanced is the default; «lowest delay» for competitive play, «smoothest» for cinematic games. The app picks HEVC when the box has a good low-latency HEVC decoder, otherwise H.264.

6. 06

   Read the overlay, then adjust

   Frames, drops, repairs, encode time, round trip, decode time and pacing, plus the PC’s own report with the cause in words. If the PC is not keeping up, lower the resolution; if the network is, the regulator already did — and corruption never sticks either way.

• Only possible choices

  Resolutions labelled with how they arrive; frame rates the decoder really plays.

• A regulator that sees the PC

  Capture cadence, encode time and real encoder output, not just packet loss.

• Changes without reconnecting

  Bitrate, budget, repair and encoder controls change mid-game from the remote.

• A cause, not a mystery

  The PC panel says «the phone asks to repair: check the network» or «the PC isn’t keeping up with those frames».